Business Scalability, Operational Efficiency and Competitive Edge with MariaDB MaxScale 1.0 GA

When I started my career in early nineties, the Internet, the open source software movement and the Linux operating system were in their infancy and MariaDB and MySQL did not exist. Today open source is a mainstream software delivery mechanism, and web applications are built upon open source stacks which include Linux and MariaDB. Sybase was the first relational database I worked with – a then leading relational technology in early nineties. Four months ago, I joined the team at MariaDB – a now leading open source relational database company where fast and cutting edge innovations take place.

Our team at MariaDB works with many organizations that use MariaDB to drive their web applications. Our business users tell us that, their success lies in their ability to deliver a quality customer experience, control cost, support a growing user base and stay competitive with faster innovation. In terms of database infrastructure, organizations use database clustering, replication and sharding mechanisms to provide scalability to support growing user base. The challenge with these scaling mechanisms is that they introduce complexity in the database management layer of the applications. This in turn results in operational in-efficiency, longer time to market and reduced quality of the customer experience.

So, our experienced engineers with deep database and software architecture expertise decided to design an open source scalability solution that support following business goals of an organization:

• Improve developer agility and DBA productivity for operational efficiency
• Improve customer satisfaction with application continuity and performance
• Stay competitive and expand customer base by offering new and innovative services to end users

Hence the birth of MariaDB MaxScale, and today we announce the first generally available release of MariaDB MaxScale 1.0.

MariaDB MaxScale is a flexible open source platform for building highly tailored and configurable database proxy implementations. It sits between applications and database clusters for MariaDB and MySQL. Unlike traditional database proxies, MariaDB MaxScale is database aware, as it

• Understands the database environment – It supports MariaDB/MySQL replication and MariaDB Enterprise Cluster (i.e. Galera Cluster).
• Is aware of the state of the database components – It keeps track of status of MariaDB/MySQL replication nodes and MariaDB Enterprise Cluster nodes – such as Master, Slave, Donor, Joiner or Write-Master.
• Understands the data that flows through it – It can inspect query statements and responses flowing through it, and make decisions based on configurable rules.
• Routes requests based on a combination of
  • Defined algorithms
  • Component state
  • Request contents
  • Session state

MariaDB MaxScale routes the queries coming from applications to database clusters using connection based or statement based load balancing. Applications stay connected during cluster configuration changes due to administrative changes or operational failover.

Filtering and logging for improved customer experience, operational efficiency and faster innovation

Logging and filtering plugins included in MariaDB MaxScale 1.0 GA bring unique benefits to your business.

• Centralized cluster wide query performance log at MariaDB MaxScale simplifying performance tuning and improve DBA productivity.
• Regular expression based query transformation using MariaDB MaxScale
  • Connect legacy applications to newer version of databases
  • Faster database feature rollout asynchronous to application upgrade
• Use Tee-filter to duplicate queries across different types of databases or services. You can create cross-workload and cross technology services

Flexible Plugin architecture for your competitive advantage

MariaDB MaxScale’s flexible plugin architecture allows you to create plugins for new services not possible just with database platforms. Some of our existing customers are working with us to develop the following plugins

• High Performance Binlog Relay: Replicate Binlog from the master to slave through MaxScale as a simplified relay server for reduced network load and disaster recovery
• Hint based routing: Pass hints in the SQL statement to influence the routing decision base on replication lag or time out
• Route to sharded databases: Route to shards without application level knowledge of sharding schema
• Firewall filter: Prevent SQL injection attacks or unauthorized queries for improved security using filtering

If you have a need for a new service, that you were not able to deliver with existing database technologies, there may be a MaxScale plugin solution for it. Either you can develop it or we can work with you to develop one, like we have done for our customers above.

Do you want to scale your business, expand your customer base with new services, improve customer satisfaction and improve operational efficiency? Check out MariaDB MaxScale and contact us to learn more!